The invention relates generally to assembling sections of wind turbine blades and more specifically to an alignment and clamping structure and method for assembling multi-sectional wind turbine blades.
In recent years, wind turbines have become increasingly important in power generation. With increased environmental concerns related to fossil fuel power generation, wind power will grow in importance in the mix of providing electrical power. Consequently, more wind turbines will be installed. For economic reasons, it is desirable to increase the installed power per turbine. As the installed power is proportional to the diameter of the turbine rotor, the rotor sizes and turbine sizes become larger. Blade lengths continue to increase to support the higher power requirements per turbine. Typical blade lengths of current designs are up to 50 meters and greater.
Due to the often-isolated location of wind turbine farms, the rotor blades must be transported to the construction site by trucks on normal roads. The large blade size may severely limit the maneuverability of the trucks. Road transport of long, single-piece rotor blades is also very costly. Furthermore, routing of the trucks may be limited since it may be impossible to negotiate sharp turns and other interferences. Extraordinary blade length may also make loading and unloading extremely difficult. Rotor blades may require transport by ship or even helicopters to some locations.
The above-described difficulties have encouraged the development of multi-section blades. While individual sections of the multi-section blades are smaller than a one-piece blade, they are still long and heavy. Further, the blade sections must be aligned during assembly before clamping the sections together. With long and heavy blade sections, the fine alignment of the individual blade sections at the joints poses difficulty, particularly under conditions of nature that may be present at the destination windfarm sites.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a structure for the joints of the wind turbine blades and a method that facilitates alignment and assembly.